Reservoir Sunrise

A pair of hawks is nesting in the trees along the driveway.

They are beautiful creatures, red-tailed hawks with enormous wingspans. They soar and circle effortlessly, their high-pitched cries tearing at the morning’s quiet.

I am excited to see them, excited to have them in our yard.

But I’m worried, too.

Every summer, bluebirds nest in houses along our back fence. Woodpeckers come for suet, gold finches for thistle, chickadees and cardinals and bluebirds, orioles and titmice and house finches, sparrows and bluejays and grosbeaks and more all visit our feeders.

And this year, they could be in danger.

Maybe the hawks are far enough from the feeders. Maybe the feeders are close enough to the house. Maybe there are enough moles and voles, chipmunks and squirrels, field mice and bunnies to keep the hawks happy. Maybe the hawks will go hunt in the nature preserve that borders our land.

But maybe they won’t.

I look at the hawks, soaring above the yard, and I feel something inside me that is as wild as they are, as predatory, as simple. It is the thing that fights for what I believe, that protects my daughter and grandchildren, that loves with abandon and strives with ferocity. It’s pretty deep in me, most of the time, but it is there, close enough to be summoned. Close enough to rise up on its own.

There is more in me that is like the yard birds, twittery and flighty, more tame than wild, willing to take a chance to get a good meal.

In most of us, I think, the balance is pretty much like that. The hawk is there, but down deep.

I will watch, this summer, and I will hope. I will move the feeders closer to the house. I will be ready to defend our yard birds. Everyone deserves to live, and I will do what I can to make sure that everyone does.

Interested in this painting? It’s oil on canvas, 24×24. Contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information.

Tuscany

Where are the blue skies and the bright sun and the scent of warming earth? Where is the spring I so desire? I wait for it to walk down winter’s corridor, its footsteps sure and ringing. I wait for the sound of the key in the lock, the scrape of the door on the frozen earth, the invitation to go out, to find again the freedom of the fields, the limitless horizons, a world released from the chains of this winter’s snow and ice.

Where is this spring?

Outside my window, the snow is falling, and night is falling, and it feels like spring is falling, too. But I look at this painting of Tuscany, and I imagine the warmth of the sun, the peppery scent of the sunflowers, the sweep of the grass waving in a hot noon wind.

It’s coming.

This painting is oil on canvas, 24×48. Contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information.

Blue Dreams

In just a few minutes, I will go over to the Lighthouse Gallery – a lovely little gallery near my home here in Connecticut – take my show down, replace the paintings with other paintings, and drive what is essentially my Lighthouse/Wallkill River School Gallery show to Boston for the Paradise City show, a major, very high-end arts and craft show that I am a little stunned to have been accepted into.

Chris Rose, curator of the Lighthouse Gallery, came over to my studio the other day to select the replacement paintings, and he put some notions in my head.

One was to try (again) a limited palette. The other was to work on two paintings at the same time.

I like a challenge, and I like Chris, so I tried both – and am I glad I did. I really love this painting. I can’t say that I understand it or can explain it. I can’t say that it adheres to anything in reality, or to any rules – but it has a soft feeling that really appeals to me. Also I am a sucker for blue, so there you go.

I will post the other painting – this one’s opposite, soon.

These are versions of a painting that I think might be the best one I ever did, which was bought by a dear friend of mine at my show in February at the Wallkill River School Gallery in Montgomery. I am honored  that my friend bought that painting – and really, also, helped me paint this new one.

If you are interested in buying “Blue Dreams,” please contact me for price and shipping/delivery options. The painting is in oil, on a gallery-wrapped canvas, 24×24.

Power Trio

The other day, about this same time, the moon came up early and full and the color of peach ice cream. The sky was a tender blue-pink that it only seems to reach when there is snow on the ground – and the rising of that moon and the turning of the seasons felt like the rising of my heart, my hand just grasping the knob that will turn for me and and open the door to something new, something with promise – and I said a prayer of thanks and hope – and took a picture, too, just to remind myself.

Interested in this painting? It is oil on canvas, 36×48, and it’s for sale. Contact me for price and delivery options – carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Majesty

By Carrie Jacobson

It wasn’t until I traveled to the west that I understood how small we humans are.

Here on the East Coast, we have built buildings and cities and skyscrapers. We have surrounded ourselves with structures that, compared to our own bodies, are enormous.

And these are what we see. These are our measurements. These and the trees, and the hills that roll us along, up and down, through our structures and our East Coast lives.

I remember standing in the sagebrush desert of Idaho for the first time, and sensing for the very first time in my life, the enormity of the sky and the earth, the incomprehensible distance between them and the minute speck of it that I took up.

Suddenly, my ratios changed. I was not 1/2 the height of one story, which was, at most, 1/100th the height of the entire building – I was 1/millionth the size of what I was seeing, 1/billionth. I was nothing.

But ah, we easterners, we city dwellers, we foolish souls who measure ourselves against our own constructions! How we are deceived.

I love the feeling of being the size of a mote of dust. I love the universe of sky stretching away overhead to some place I can only imagine, and the run of earth beneath my feet connecting me to the other side of the country, the other side of the world. I love feeling that feeling, and reaching for it in my paintings.

Lulu

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made a painting for the Art for Shelter Animals Project, and so it felt really good to make this one. Plus, it gave me a much-needed break from interviewing, covering and writing about people and events in Montville. (Anyone want to check out the Montville Patch, the site that I run? Click here).

Lulu is a dog I met through work. She was dropped at the shelter, pregnant, with what must have been her 20th litter (or more), judging by the sag and droop of her breasts. She had a litter of nine puppies in the shelter, and they are all spoken for. Lulu is up for adoption, herself, and really needs to go to a home where she will be loved and treated well and treasured. Maybe this home will make up for how hard the rest of her life has been.

She has had to have an operation, a mastectomy, I believe, after one of her much-used teats became infected. But she is up and around, and can be adopted soon. I am going to give the animal control officer the painting tomorrow.

That’s the way the Art for Shelter Animals Project works. Artists from around the world have joined in, all making portraits of animals in their local shelters, or with local rescue groups, and then donating the portraits to the shelter or rescue group. The shelter can do whatever it wants with the paintings. It’s a fun, fascinating project – anyone who wants to join in, just let me know!

Making art to give away is an incredibly liberating experience. It was through the ASAP that I began to experiment with colors and textures – I felt free and unafraid (at first I typed “unarfraid,” which actually seems like the right word…) – free and unafraid, and why not? The group receiving the portrait was going to love it, no matter what, so the specter of “bad” or “wrong” simply vanished.

Max

One of the many things falling between the cracks here with work and painting is marketing! Eek!

“Rough at Hand,” my show at the Wallkill River School Gallery, is OPEN! It is up for the month of February, and there is a reception on Saturday, from 5-7 p.m.

I had a once-in-a lifetime experience as I hung the show last Saturday. I’d just gotten it all up, and made a price list. I was sitting down contemplating, when in walked two people who had bought paintings from me last year. They love my work – and between them, Saturday, they bought five paintings. When they asked if they could take them, I said sure!

I had extras with me, and so I rehung, repriced – and thanked my lucky stars not only for the money that those two were willing to part with, but also, and even more, for the fact that they loved my work. Honestly, there is something so moving about that, so sustaining, so life-affirming, that it makes my heart beat fast now, just thinking about it.

Please come to the opening! I am just as excited as I could be about my new work, and it is more precious than ever to me, as my time to paint is so scarce these days.

The Wallkill River School Gallery is at 232 Ward St. (Route 17K) in Montgomery, NY. The website is wallkillriverschool.com.

For those of you in Connecticut and Rhode Island, I will be having a show in March at the Lighthouse Gallery in Groton, with the amazing Laura Maiolo. More on that as it draws closer.

For those of you in NY, see you Saturday!

Yowza, Cowza

There are days when my brain feels as blank and undefined as the surface of the snow in the yard, and this is one of them.

So I will let it go by saying that I really enjoy painting cows, and I have no explanation for that. I have no real love of cows (though I get pretty excited about a good burger…) – I’ve never had a cow, or wanted a cow, or held a particular fondness for cows. I mean, they are fine.

I do like seeing them standing in fields, though. And I find it intriguing that they like looking at humans about as much as humans like looking at them.

I stumbled on this enjoyment of painting cows by accident, when I was traveling through Wyoming. I got off the road (I got off the highway at every exit in Wyoming, just to see what was there), and bumped on down a dirt path, and a group of handsome if large and menacing cows crossed my path and required me to turn around. I took photos, and have made several paintings from these photos, and all have sold. So I am not the only one who enjoys looking at cows.

When we lived in Idaho, we had a little dog who despised cows. They infuriated him, and he would bark like a crazy dog whenever he saw one, including once when we were crossing an open range and a large crowd of horned, huge black Angus surrounded the car.

Gus even barked at a statue of a cow that stood outside a steak joint.

So, “Yowza Cowza,” another in the bovine series.

Don’t forget about my show, “Rough Hand” at the Wallkill River School in February. The opening is Feb. 5. Don’t worry, I will remind you again!

Lavendar Field

A year or so ago, I bought a painting by Patrice Lynne Young, a Georgia artist whose work I love. It was a painting of lavender fields rolling off to mountains in the background. I loved the painting and still do, and I look at it every day and appreciate it.

A year or so ago, in my show at the Wallkill River School, Shawn Dell Joyce and I demonstrated our painting techniques. I demonstrated palette-knife painting, using Patrice’s painting for inspiration.

The painting here is the painting I started during that demo.

I began it and then invited people watching to participate, and lo and behold, they did! They all had fun, and for the most part, made marks that made sense in terms of the painting. A couple really didn’t, and so I never finished the painting, never knew what to do with it.

But it has intrigued me for a year, and I have looked at it for a year, and so, one day last week, I pulled it out and went to town.

I guess it’s fair to say that this is my painting – but it is my painting based on a painting by an artist whose work I love, and a painting informed and helped along by friends and strangers. And so, it is very much like life.

My show this year at the Wallkill River School – titled Rough at Hand, from a poem by Robert Hegge – is Saturday, Feb. 5.

Please save the date, and please come to the opening from 5-7 p.m. I will have new work, small work, big work, and exciting work! I think you will love seeing it in person, so please come, say hi, and let me thank you in person for your support.

The Wallkill River School is at 232 Ward St., (Route 17K), in Montgomery.

Rough at Hand

Love is like a landscape which doth stand,

Smooth at a distance, rough at hand.

– Robert Hegge

Storm!

A big storm blew in, the day after Christmas, and for a stretch, the world was filled with wind and sky and the howling power of nature. The next day, you’d not have known such violence existed.

In the blanket of calm that came after the storm, I walked through our quiet, white yard, and felt like the only person in the word. My footsteps broke the surface, and I was the adventurer.

In the branches overhead, swaying in a sudden burst of wind, a hawk alighted and hung on. I stared up at him and he hesitated, spread his wings and glided off, an impossibly large creature wending through branches I’d not have thought a sparrow could fit through.

I love the violence of the storm, and the bout of peace that follows. Like waking and sleeping, breathing in and breathing out, it defines and sustains us all at once.

This was the fifth Christmas I’ve lived through without my mother, and the first I’ve gotten through without being swept by sadness. Time might not heal, but it covers the wind and the rage and the storming pain with something quiet and tender and not unlike the snow.

This painting is 36×48, oil on canvas. Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information.